Kat gets the gold top
KATARINA Johnson-Thompson led a British one-two in the pentathlon on the first day of the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow.
The world indoor champion, 26, finished with 4,983 points – once again narrowly missing out on Nataliya Dobrynska’s world record of 5,013, set in 2012.
Briton Niamh Emerson, 19, took silver on her European debut.
But it was all about KJT last night.
She managed 5,000 points in the same competition in 2015 and entered the penultimate event – the long jump – needing an effort of over 6.60m to give herself hope of breaking the world record going into the concluding 800m.
But she managed 6.53m with her only clean jump from three and looked distraught when the red flag was shown after what appeared to be a big final leap.
That left the Commonwealth champion needing to run faster than 2 mins 7.09 secs in the final event, but she missed out by just over two seconds.
She said: “It was a really good day. I’m really happy with the performance and the points.” There was further joy for Scot Laura Muir, who retained her 3,000m title.
She added a second gold of the night for the hosts, sitting on the shoulder of German rival Konstanze Klosterhalfen before streaking clear on the final lap to seal a convincing victory.
Despite having run a 1500m heat earlier in the evening, Muir’s finishing speed still proved far too hot to handle as she came home in a championship record 8:30.61.
Muir said: “Hats off to Konstanze, she ran a great race. I just knew I can’t lose it here, this is my home turf, my home track.”